Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access Review

Good interface and valuable feature set with an easy setup

What is our primary use case?

What is most valuable?

The interface is very good and the feature set is very good. The investigation options, for example, in the data are very useful.

What needs improvement?

The dependencies of applications sometimes are a bit confusing. All the dependencies you have between applications can be confusing when you fill in things. It's mostly the configuration with the different applications. Extra guidance in using applications and things like that might be helpful.

In terms of features, at the moment, the features we use are all in there. But we don't even use the full feature set at the moment. So I don't really have any need for anything else. For now, there's not really anything missing.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for seven years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We've had no issue over the whole lifespan with any failures so we didn't have any problem with that. In terms of the scalability, supposedly the model you choose the scale goes up at the beginning. You can buy a firewall device and scalability is dependant on the model.

How are customer service and technical support?

We used an integrator so we don't need to contact their technical support directly.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is very straightforward. With the standard deployment, I think it took a few days.

What about the implementation team?

We used an integrator for the initial setup. They were very good.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I think that the Palo Alto solution is very good. The licensing in comparison to other competitors is not really an issue. The price is not low but you can't compare with all the premium firewalls in its range. The licensing cost is about 18,000 euros.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend the solution. The solution really depends on your budget, of course. If you have a really low budget it's not a low budget solution, so it can really depend on the budget you have. But if you have a budget for enterprise or best of firewalls I think you should take this solution into consideration.

I would rate this solution at 8.5 or 9 out of 10. No product, of course, is totally perfect and a ten is something that I don't think that exists. I think maybe it needs a bit more ease of how applications and dependencies run. Because sometimes you push a firewall rule and you get lots of dependencies so that could be a more manageable thing. Extra guidance in using applications and things like that would be helpful.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.